062 – One Month Of Bonding Helped Me With A Lifetime In Adoption

Tim was adopted into a Lutheran family and his curiosity about his roots started when he was very young. When he met his biological mother, she portrayed her husband as Tim’s father, but the truth came out when her daughters suggested a different version of the truth. It wasn’t until Tim’s early 70’s that he made paternal links and solved the mysteries of his life

Read Full TranscriptTim: 00:01 So they were staying with me and then they brought me along to the convention, into the Party afterwards and brought me to the party and these are old friends of theirs saying, well, who is this? Who is this? And again, they played the kind of joke routine, oh, he’s the, he’s relative doesn’t he, look like us, don’t you think he looks like us then. And then there was a lot of laughter and that crossed the line. That was one of the lower points of this whole thing for me.

Intro voices: 00:36 Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon: 00:48 Who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I’m Damon Davis, and on today’s show you’re going to be Tim who called me from Brooklyn, New York. I asked him if he was a native New Yorker and he said, no, I’ve only been here 50 years. He was born and raised in Minnesota. You’ll hear him describe a life where he was allowed to bond with his birth mother early, which he feels made a huge difference in his adoption. Later. His faith, which he followed a long way, turned out to be quite different from his heritage. Tim shares how his birth mother first didn’t want to meet, but was convinced to do so by Tim’s father or so he thought many decades later, Tim searches over as he’s found the missing pieces in his seventies. This is Tim’s journey….Tim was born in St Paul, Minnesota in 1944 at booth memorial hospital run by the Salvation Army in connection with a home for unwed mothers.

Tim: 01:50 I like to say I think it was significant that my birth mother kept me for a little over a month. I don’t know if that was a policy back then, but uh, I look back and think… I’m not a bitter person. I think the fact that she. She nursed me and she kept me for a little over a month. I think that… That helped in this whole adoption process.

Damon: 02:15 What did you mean by that?

Tim: 02:18 I’ve read a couple books. “Primal Wound” being a being a pretty significant book and it just feels to me like I had that connection. I had that bonding with, uh, with my mother, with my birth mother and as a primal wound refers to the sounds and the smells and all that of the woman whose body you were in for nine months. But I… that remained for at least a month, a little longer than a month. I think it might’ve even been the policy at the salvation army back then. I’m not sure, but she kept me there at the home for four or five or six weeks. And so to me it feels like that helped. Uh, I think then I’m sure there was a trauma who really knows, but when I left that and was placed in basically an orphanage for five or six months, um, I’m sure that was traumatic on some level, but at least I had that one month of uh affection and closeness and bonding that I could relate to. And then, and from what I can figure, of course, who knows when we’re that young. But, uh, when I was adopted by my adoptive parents, I seem to cling to my adoptive mother affectionately for actually the rest of my life.

Damon: 03:57 What you’ve said is really interesting. You’re probably right if you were born and bonded to your mother for a month and then you know, separated when she left you to be adopted, the next person that you would have gotten a hold of with your tiny little baby hands would be somebody that you cling to. That’s really interesting.

Tim: 04:23 I mean I just have a vivid memory as does my adopted mother of me just being beyond affectionate with her her whole life.

Damon: 04:33 After that first month of bonding, Tim’s mother transferred him to Lutheran social services where he stayed for five or six months. At some point, he developed either measles or mumps, which held up his adoption. Then he was placed with his family. Tim’s adoptive mother had been a social worker at the very agency through which he was adopted. He figures that professional experience made her particularly sensitive to the needs of adoptees. She quit the social work job five years before bringing him home. After adopting their first daughter, his older sister, he was placed in 1945, but since then he’s found out that he was officially adopted in 1949, asking others about the five year gap between his placement and his official adoption. Folks who know the process well say they feel that timeline is unusually long. Tim speaks very highly of his adopted mother and juxtaposes his affection against his older and younger sisters.

Tim: 05:33 I refer to her. Of course she’s been dead for quite a while, but um, I refer to her as my lifesaver really because she was the absolute epitome of unconditional love as far as I was concerned. She, she had my back no matter what and I’m sure she was happy to get all the affection that I was her, my, my older, a sister adopted sister, uh, was not very affectionate and, and neither was my younger sister who was their child, their biological child, but neither of them were a super affectionate type as II was and still am to some...